RAF
/ Reduce Art Flights
is a campaign which upholds that the art world – artists,
curators, critics, gallerists, collectors, museum
directors, etc. – could or should diminish its use of
aeroplanes. It was initiated by the artist Gustav Metzger
(10 April 1926, Nuremberg – 1 March 2017, London). [1]

This website (formally at www.reduceartflights.com) has
been established as a resource for the initiative and as a
location for future elaborations of its aims.

The RAF acronym deliberately echoes the
Royal Air Force
– the aerial warfare branch of the British military – as
well as the militant left-wing group known as the
Red Army Faction.
The campaign had been mooted by Metzger for a year or so,
before being realized as a mass-produced leaflet on the
occasion of the artist's participation in
Sculpture Projects Münster
in 2007. This leaflet was based on a 1942 Royal Air Force
poster that detailed the aerial bombardment of Germany
during the Second World War. The project conjoins the
historical memory of airborne destruction (Münster was
among several cities devastated by air-raids), with
Metzger's "ongoing and endless opposition to capitalism,
and his "objection to the massive commercial growth of the
art industry, exemplified by the unprecedented art tourism
of the 2007 "Grand Tour" (the coincidence of the 52nd
Venice Biennial; the five-yearly Documenta 12, Kassel; and
the once-a-decade Sculpture Projects Münster itself). [2]

The RAF initiative is neither a work of art, nor an idea
over which Metzger claims ownership or leadership. This
website (and this text) grows out of the inclusion of the
RAF initiative in the exhibition
Greenwashing. Environment, Perils, Promises and
Perplexities
(Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, 29
February – 18 May 2008). On this occasion the curators were
guided by the artist's advice concerning how the campaign
could be extended. "RAF Torino" consisted of the printing
of a new version of the leaflet, made available in the
galleries and inserted into international mailings in
connection with the exhibition, and the distribution and
attempted implementation of its inherent request to
"consider forms of travel and transportation other than
flying" in the process of Greenwashing's organisation. [3]

Leafleting is one of the most elementary forms of
campaigning and propaganda. Somewhat ironically in this
context, among its most effective applications in the last
century has been through the deployment of aeroplanes to
drop leaflets as a form of psychological warfare. The plea
to "Reduce
Art Flights"
– however viable or compelling it may be – does not attempt
to address practical means to alleviate art world aviation
itself. Instead, Metzger suggests the "reduce, reuse,
recycle" mantra of environmentalism be transformed and
integrated into a more radical spectrum of consideration of
humanity's destructive potential. With full cognisance that
it is "a drop in the ocean", the RAF "manifesto"
nevertheless invites voluntary abandonment – a fundamental,
personal, bodily rejection of technological
instrumentalization and a vehement refusal to participate
in the mobility increasingly endemic to the globalized art
system. [5]

text by Max Andrews

[1] "At last year's Art Basel I felt that something should
or could be done in relation to the flights, both of
artists and gallery people, and the transportation of works
of art." Gustav Metzger quoted in Mark Godfrey, "Protest
and Survive", Frieze, Issue 108, Jun-Aug 2007
[2] Ibid.
[3] Gustav Metzger, telephone conversation with Max
Andrews, 1 November, 2007.
[4] Gustav Metzger quoted in Mark Godfrey, op. cit.
[5] Ibid.